The Charlotte Observer
Missouri man thrown from pick-up truck in suspected DUI found dead next day by police.
‘What if he just laid there?’ He was flung from a DUI crash, but cops missed his body, family says
By Jared Gilmour, McClatchy December 5, 2017
His body had been lying in the woods, unknown to police, for hours by the time his father’s phone rang.
On the phone was Travis Moore, one of the best friends of Russell Eynard’s 28-year-old son Kevin. Moore was calling from the hospital Sunday afternoon, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reports.
“Travis said he was in a drunk-driving crash, he totaled his truck and he and the other guy got airlifted to a hospital,” Eynard’s sister, Jessica Farmer, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “He doesn’t know where Kevin is.”
Moore, 27, had been rushed to the hospital on Saturday at 11:30 p.m., after he lost control of the pickup he was driving and crashed the vehicle in St. Charles County, Mo., according to the Missouri Highway Patrol.
As soon as police arrived, Moore and another passenger, Joseph Olivastro, 31, were taken to the hospital, KMOV reports.
But police didn’t realize Kevin Eynard had been in the car, too — and that he was sent flying from the vehicle when it overturned.
Once Eynard’s father got off the phone with Moore, he started calling around to local police departments and hospitals to locate his son, the Post-Dispatch reports. Eventually he got a hold of highway patrol — and learned that his son wasn’t even included in the law enforcement report on the crash.
Police went back to the scene to look for Eynard the day after the crash, KMOV reports. They found Eynard’s body at about 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, roughly 13 hours after the crash.
Eynard was pronounced dead at the scene, and was taken to the St. Louis County morgue, according to highway patrol records.
His body had been about 150 feet into the woods, according to the Post-Dispatch.
“There was a thick wood line in the area, and he was inside the wooded area,” Cpl. Juston Wheetley of the Missouri Highway Patrol told the Post-Dispatch, explaining how the body had been overlooked. “He was ejected a long distance from the vehicle, up in a wood line, in the dark.”
Moore had been driving drunk, highway patrol records said, and none of the passengers had been wearing a seat belt when the pickup crashed.
Moore has been arrested on preliminary charges of driving while intoxicated and second degree assault, as well as on drunk driving charges related to Eynard’s death, according to the highway patrol.
Police told Eynard’s family that he died instantly after he was flung from the vehicle when it crashed, the Post-Dispatch reports.
Still, his family wonders. “In our minds, what if he just laid there?” Farmer, his sister, said in an interview with the Post-Dispatch. “I keep thinking he hears helicopters and they’re rescuing everybody else and he’s just laying there.”